


The first time we met

by Ninathecyborg



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Crying, Ghost Marco Bott, I'm Sorry, M/M, Memories, and ghosts, quite a bit of crying, set after marco's death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:16:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7080706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninathecyborg/pseuds/Ninathecyborg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean misses Marco. He misses him so much. More than a year has passed since his death, but Jean still can't come to terms with it. But then one day, Jean discovers Marco's ghost, and things slowly start to get better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

“Can you believe that Eren got into another car crash? That idiot never learns. If you drive fast, you’re gonna crash. He never learns…”

Just how I never learn that a 4B pencil will smudge, no matter how much you sharpen it.

“Are you even listening?” I’m not. I know that Eren crashed. I heard this morning.

“Mhm,” I say anyway. The wind picks up, blowing the pages of my sketchbook across the table. I hear Connie sigh over the receiver.

“Look, Jean, you can’t keep cutting yourself off from everyone like this.”

I’m not cut off, I want to say. I’m sitting on my porch. All you have to do is come see me. But I don’t say that. Instead, I furrow my eyebrows.

“It’s the 16th of June today.”

“Yeah, and?” I stay silent for a moment. “Oh. Ohh. Sorry. I don’t know how I could’ve forgotten that.”

“It’s fine.” Another pause.

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.”

“Should I come over?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“If you need anything, I’m at the pub.” That’s one of the good things that comes with living in a village. There’s only one of everything. One pub, one church, one shop. There’s no doubt as to someone’s whereabouts.

“Are you sure you’re ok?” No.

“Yeah.” I say, and then hang up. I am fine. At least I keep telling myself that.

Today is the 16th of June.

Marco would have turned 25 today.

Would have.


	2. Marco.

I’ve been avoiding looking at the calendar all day. Even now, as I’m pouring boiling water into my mug, I’m looking the other way. It’s a miracle that I don’t burn myself.

Birthdays are supposed to be a day where you celebrate someone’s existence. You show them your love and affection and tell them just how happy you are that they’re alive. But it’s pretty hard to do that when they’re not. Alive, that is.

My friends tell me that I should think about all the happy memories, that I should be thankful that it happened. It does help. For a few minutes, at least. Then I remember that I’ll never be able to make any more of those memories. What I’ve got in my head is all I have and all I’ll ever have. And then I’m back to where I started.

Maybe that’s why I can’t stand watching television alone. The couch is too big for just one person. The cushions are too soft. The windows are too open. Maybe that’s why I’m going outside now. Now, at nine in the evening, with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. It’s not cold, but it will be.

There’s a bunch of withered flowers by the front door. Peonies. I promised myself I’d take them up for him this year. But I didn’t.

There are four chairs around the table on the porch. That’s three too many. My mum said I should sell what I don’t need any more. She said I should just sell the whole house. Sometimes I agree with her. Maybe it would do me good, give me a fresh start. The house is a fairly small one, only one floor, yet at the same time too big for just one person.

But then again, Marco helped paint the walls inside. Marco helped assemble the furniture when I couldn’t do it myself. Marco cracked a tile in the kitchen when he dropped the toaster. Marco is part of the house. And selling the house would be like letting go of him for good.

But I’m not ready to do that yet.

Everything reminds me of him. The stream. The sun. The stars. It’s painful. God, it’s painful. But at the same time I’m glad. I don’t know what to do with the memories, but at the same time I don’t know what I’d do without them.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m mourning for too long. Almost a year and a half has passed. Should I be moving on with my life now? Should I be forgetting the past and trying to look forward to the future? Should I just be happy that it happened? Does crying because it’s not happening anymore make me selfish?

My mum wants me to sell the house. She wants me to move on. Connie keeps introducing me to new people. He wants me to move on. Everyone thinks that moving on is a good thing. They think that it’s the first step towards a happier life.

But what if I don’t want to?

What if I don’t want to get over it? Is this what other people do? Dedicate a portion of their lives to somebody and then as soon as they’re gone say, ‘’Well, that was fun. It’s a shame it ended so soon.” and then just continue living. I can’t do that. I don’t want to _._

I look up at the sky. It’s cloudy. I can’t see any stars. The moon hasn’t risen. The sun has only just set. It’s not cold yet, but it will be.

“Happy birthday, Marco.” I whisper into the haze. I hold my breath for a few seconds, staying as still as I can. I don’t know what I was expecting. His ghost to come up to me and say thanks? Maybe.

The church bells start ringing, announcing the end of the day. The sun has left. Maybe I should too.

Maybe I should go inside. Maybe I should just go to sleep.

Then I hear it.

It’s faint, barely audible, but I recognize the tune immediately.

_“Happy Birthday, to you.”_

I hear the singing every so often, maybe every month. It always comes from the direction of the church perched on the hill just above the village. If it weren’t for the trees surrounding it, I’d have a clear view. I've always assumed that someone was just having a birthday party later in the evening. It’s not impossible; there are houses nearby.

_“Happy Birthday, to you…”_

Huh. I wonder who shares a birthday with Marco.

_“Happy Birthday…”_

But tonight it’s different. I can’t quite place it, but I know something is off.

_“Happy Birthday…”_

Then it hits me.

I shoot up out of my chair. The blanket slides off my shoulders and I feel it fall around my feet, but I don’t care.  

That was Marco’s voice.

I’ve heard his voice before. Little disembodied whispers at midnight or a passing conversation in a shopping centre. But those weren’t really him. Those were just my mind _wanting_ it to be him.

But this is different. It’s him. I’m sure of it.

I strain my ears, stop breathing all together. I want to hear it again. I need to hear it again.

Connie sometimes jokes that I’m crazy with grief. Maybe I am.

But then it echoes down the hill again. 

_“Happy Birthday, to you…”_

It’s Marco. No doubt about it. It’s the same voice I heard at every birthday party. The same voice that I heard every morning. It’s different from the other times I ‘hear’ him. He sounds real. He sounds _alive._

I don’t hesitate. I don’t stop and think how this is even possible. I just run, leaving the blanket on a heap on the floor. I leap over my garden wall and run through the neighbouring field, not even taking a moment to think that I’m only wearing socks and the grass is already wet with evening dew.

I’m not thinking at all.

I continue across the field and jump down onto the road, wincing as my feet meet the asphalt.

I can hear him humming. Drawing me closer. My feet follow his voice, slamming down on the road of their own accord.

What am I trying to gain? Do I really think that Marco is up there, singing himself happy birthday?

I don’t know. Maybe I do think he is up there. Somehow. Or maybe I just want to see where it’s coming from. Maybe I want to prove that I’m not crazy.  

I take a shortcut by the bottom of the graveyard. The mud soaks through my socks, but I don’t care. Or rather, I will care in the morning, but right now I’m not thinking. No, I _can’t_ think. And if you can’t think, you can’t care.

The light is fading fast. With every step that I take towards his voice, the light becomes less and less. I can hear him clearly now. There is no doubt left inside me. The gate is already open and I run through it, tripping on the frame.

My eyes adjust as my feet carry me forward. They know where they are going, but my mind does not. The graves materialize before me. They’re just close enough to be considered in a line but nowhere near parallel. It’s almost as if a toddler placed them down. Everything looks unfamiliar in the thinning light. But then again, it wouldn’t be much different during the day. I haven’t been here for over a year.

His humming is loud now, piercing my ears and throbbing in my chest. I lift my neck, searching for the source.

When I find it, I am in no way prepared for what I see.

It’s Marco. 

Marco, with his ever-messy mop of hair. Marco, with his constellation of freckles. Marco, sitting on what I know is his gravestone.

I wanted him to be there, of course I did. But I didn't think it was possible. But now he is.

_Marco._

I stumble towards him, stepping on a branch as I do. He stops his humming and his head turns ever so slowly to face me, standing up as he does.

He’s like a shadow. No, the opposite of a shadow. Pale, even though there is no moonlight. There, but barely. Realistic, but not real.

Is he real? Or am I just hallucinating?  

But he looks so real. His face looks so real. Every freckly is in its place. And his eyes look so _alive._ Wide and innocent, the same as the first time I met him. Right now, I don’t care if he’s real or not. He’s here. In front of me.

I start to run. I slip and my knee slams into the edge of a gravestone but I don’t even feel the pain. My mouth opens before I can stop myself and I cry his name in a way that I would never allow myself to with anyone else.

My arms rise up and I squeeze my eyes shut even though I know that’s probably a bad idea. My whole body tenses in anticipation because I know that soon I’ll have my arms wrapped around him again and I’ll be able to pretend that none of the past year and a half happened.

But I never run into him.

I skid to a halt and open my eyes, letting my arms fall limp by my side. I’ve run right past him.

But he was in front of me. I was only centimetres away when I closed my eyes.

I turn around only to see Marco still glued to the exact same spot he was before. Does that mean I ran… through him?

“Marco…” I whisper, shuffling towards him again. I extend my arm towards him. It’s shaking, and there’s nothing I can do to make it stop. Marco turns around to face me again.

I take a sharp breath then plunge my hand forward. I wince, but nothing happens. It just goes straight through him. Straight through Marco. Like he isn’t even there. Like I’m trying to touch a holographic hallucination.

I don’t know whether to laugh or scream.

Marco looks down at my arm, seemingly unamused. I pull it out and let it hang by my side.

I breathe out slowly. All I’ve wanted for the past year and a half is to be able to touch Marco again. To be able to feel his always warm skin under my hand again. I try to fight back the tears pooling in my eyes.

I lift my head up and let my eyes meet Marco’s. the fact that I can stick my arm through him is making my mind shout _not real,_ but his eyes are screaming _real._ And I want to believe his eyes.

Marco tilts his head to the side ever so slightly and starts to open his mouth. I can already hear him saying my name.

But he doesn’t.

“Who’s Marco?” My body aches at the sound of his voice. I haven’t heard it in so long. But then I realise what he said.

I’m taken completely off guard.

“You. You’re Marco. You are, right?” My voice is hoarse, desperately trying to escape my mouth before my mind can even conjure the words. Marco furrows his brow like he always did when deciding whether something is true or not.

“Marco… I guess that sounds like me.” He says after a moment. I just want him to keep talking. I don’t ever want him to stop. He relaxes his face again and looks me dead in the eyes. _Hah._  

“And who are you?”

It feels like I’ve been stabbed through the chest.

“M-Marco. It’s me, Jean.” He considers this for a moment.

“Have we met before?” If I wasn’t crying before, I sure as hell am now.

“Don’t you remember me? Jean Kirstein?” He shakes his head.

“Sorry John…” What little composure I had left crumbles around me.

“It’s Jean.” Tears stream down my cheeks. He’s here, in front of me, _talking_ to me. But he doesn’t remember anything about his life? What did I do to deserve something like this?

I can’t stop the tears now. No matter how fast I wipe them away, they just come back, even more of them than before. I’m a sniffling wreck.

“Hey, are you ok?” Marco says. He sounds so genuine it physically hurts.

“No, Marco. I’m not.” I manage to choke out.

“Jean-” His voice is so soft. I can’t take it anymore. It’s Marco. It’s him. Everything he does is him. But he doesn’t remember. Every well-meant word is another stab to the chest.

“I- I have to go.” There is no light left and the moon hasn’t risen. I can barely see, and the tears clouding my vision don’t help.

I feel like I’m being torn up inside. If I stay here any longer, I’ll start screaming.

So I run.  


	3. Night One

I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing. I roll over to pick it up, but it’s not by my bed. I open my eyes.

Oh. That’s because I’m not on my bed. I’m on the couch. And I’m not quite sure why.

I spot my phone on the ground and answer without even checking.

“Dude, I’ve been knocking for 15 minutes. Don’t pretend you can’t hear me.” Connie’s shrill voice comes through the speaker. The sound of someone hammering on my door follows shortly. How I managed to sleep through that is a mystery.

I hang up and contemplate going back to sleep, then get up anyway. I’m still not sure why I was asleep on the couch.

I open the door to see Connie holding up a seemingly damp blanket.

“Is this yours? It was on your porch but you usually don’t leave things outside so I wanted to double check.” It is my blanket. I know that much. But I can’t remember why I would leave it outside. Connie is right; I hate letting things get damp.

My memory has never been any good in the morning. It always takes me at least 10 minutes and possibly a cup of coffee before I can remember what I did the previous day and what I’m supposed to be doing that day. Today is no different.

I reach my arm out and take the blanket. “Is that why you stopped by? To give me the blanket?” I say. My mouth feels dry. I don’t think I brushed my teeth last night. Connie laughs.

“Actually, I stopped by to check on you. You seemed pretty down yesterday, because of the birthday and all.”

Bang.

Everything comes rushing back to me. The singing. The graveyard. The crying. The running. Marco. _Marco._ How could I forget Marco? I could never forget him. Maybe I _didn’t_ forget him. What if it was all just a dream? One big, long, hyper realistic dream?

Proof. I need proof. The blanket is one. But I could’ve just forgotten it out there. It doesn’t prove much. What else is there? I think back to last night. Or maybe the dream. I was running. In my socks. I look down at my feet, but they’re bare. If it wasn’t a dream, there should be a pair of muddied socks somewhere. Half of me hopes there is, the other half doesn’t. I glance around and there they are, a pair of muddied socks lying on the ground, thrown haphazardly into the corner.

It was real.

Connie notices my change of mood. He always told me it was easy to tell what I was feeling. All my emotions bubble up to the surface, whether I want them to or not.

“Are you ok? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Hah.

The words start coming out of me before I can stop them. “Connie, last night, I- I saw Marco.” His face gets serious. I take a step back to let him in then close the door.

“You had another grief hallucination?” He says, turning back to me.

“ _No._ Grief hallucinations occur in the first and second month after a… y’know.”

“From what I can remember, you had them for five months.”

“That’s not the point…” He’s right again. The first five months where hell, and Connie didn’t leave my side during them. I’d see Marco everywhere I went, hear him in every voice. I kept saying to Connie, ‘I just saw him! He was right there!’ but when I looked back, he never was.

But this is different. It’s different because I saw him, and when I looked back, he was still there. And when I spoke to him, he spoke back.

“This wasn’t a hallucination,” I say again. “I saw him. I talked to him. And he talked back.”

“You know that’s not possible, Jean.”

“But I _know_ it happened. I put my arm through him. And-” I reach down and roll up my trouser leg, revealing a dark purple bruise. “I tripped in the graveyard and hit myself on a stone. It _happened,_ Connie.”

I see a flicker of belief in Connie’s eyes and for a second I think ‘ _Yes, he believes me.’_. But then the flicker fades away. My shoulders droop. He just sighs. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to tell him. ‘Think before you speak’ has always been a rule I ignored. Maybe I thought that Connie would be happy, that he’d want to go talk to Marco, that he’d help me go up there again. He was friends with Marco too, after all.

Connie runs his hand over what little fuzz he has on his head before opening his mouth again. “Look, if believing this makes it easier for you to deal with things, then okay. Just don’t get obsessed with it.”

I nod, defeated.

Connie leaves a few minutes later, claiming Sasha sent him on a ‘mission’ and he side-tracked. He pats me on the shoulder on his way out and gives me the type of smile you’d give to someone who’s completely lost it and is screaming ‘I saw them! I saw them!’ about someone who died years ago. But then again, I’m not too far from that.

“It’ll be fine.” He tells me.

“Sure,” I say.

Left alone once again, I quickly decide that it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t believe me. I know it’s real. At least, I think it is. Although I’m getting more doubtful by the minute. There’s only one thing I can do;

Go back again tonight.

I glance at the clock on the wall. It’s barely eleven. What time did I see him yesterday? It was already dark. Past nine surely. Which means I have to wait at least another ten hours. _Ten hours._ What am I going to do for ten hours? I glance at a pile of books on the floor by my bookshelf. I started sorting them a few weeks ago, only to stop halfway through. I might as well continue.

Armin calls me around midday, interrupting my book sorting. I was stacking them by colour.

“Jean!” He chirps as soon as I answer.

“Hi Armin.”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine.” I consider telling him about Marco, but then decide against it. It didn’t go well with Connie, who I see almost every day, so I doubt it would go well with Armin, who I see less and less of every year.

“You always say that.”

“That’s because I’m always fine.” I counter. I can hear him sigh through the phone.

“Listen, Jean, remember when I said you could come work with us whenever you decided to?” I have to force myself not to groan. “That offer still stands.”

“Armin…” He owns a grocery store with his grandfather in the next town over. He’s been trying to get me to work there for the past year.

“I’m not going to force you into anything. I’m just saying that you still can.” I know he doesn’t need the extra help. He knows he doesn’t need the extra help.

“Thanks, Armin. I’ll think about it.” I don’t think I will. I hang up.

When he first brought the idea up, I turned him down straight away. My mother said, ‘Armin is just trying to help’. And I said, ‘I don’t want help, I want Marco’. She didn’t mention it again after that. But Armin didn’t give up. Every month or so he calls to remind me, and every time I tell him I’ll think about it. The worst part is that I know that it would probably help me. A new environment, something to occupy my mind.

I look at the phone in my hand and let it drop onto the couch. I’ll think about it, but not today.

I’m restless for the remainder of the day. I try to occupy myself with something, but after so long of occupying myself with nothing, it’s hard.

I try to draw. I don’t have any inspiration. So I try drawing Marco, but I can’t get his face right, which makes me think I’m forgetting what he looks like, makes me think that I’m forgetting _him._ So I don’t draw anymore. I try listening to music, something I haven’t done for months. And I soon remember why. All the playlists Marco complied are still there. It’s impossible for me to listen to a single song without being reminded of him in some way or another. So I switch to the radio instead. I try reading a book, but I can’t focus. I try watching TV, but I can’t find anything that I like. The living room makes me feel uncomfortable as it is.

It’s hopeless. So I give up, and go to sleep. Try to, at least. I spend a few hours tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling. But the sweet embrace of sleep does envelop me at some point because the next thing I know is that I’m waking up.

As luck would have it, I wake up a few minutes before nine. I feel even more tired than earlier. The sun is hovering above the horizon, like its contemplating whether it should dip below or stay around for longer. I head to the door, ready to leave.

Unlike yesterday, I’m prepared. A hoodie is wrapped around my waist and I’m actually wearing shoes. As I lock the door behind me, I notice the withered peonies on the floor and make a last minute decision. There are three peony bushes in the garden; Marco insisted on them. The flowers are closed, but I clip a few anyway and take them with me.

It’s only when I’m already on the road to the church that I realise that Marco might not be there. I was so set on seeing him that I didn’t stop to think whether it would even be possible. I mean, sure, he was there yesterday, but that doesn’t guarantee he’ll be here again today. Realising that makes me want to both run home and run to the graveyard.

I enter through the top gate, my heart already pounding. The half rusted iron squeaks as I push it open. I grip the flowers in my hand, already regretting bringing them. What will I say to him? Will he even remember yesterday?

Will he even be there?

I take my time walking to his gravestone, glancing at all the other graves as I pass by them. How many of them have been forgotten?

When I finally reach Marco’s resting place, he’s not there.

I try to repress the disappointment rising inside me. _You knew this could happen, Jean._ He could still appear. _What if he doesn’t?_ Maybe I just got here too early.

I sit down before the grave, tucking my feet beneath me. As I do, I notice the flowers already sitting in a vase on his grave. My mother must’ve put them there. Upon closer inspection, I see that they’re roses, and plastic. I frown. Marco never liked roses.

‘They’re to clichéd,’ He would say, ‘And they remind me of vampires. Which are also clichéd’.

Looking at them again, I feel almost ashamed of myself. I haven’t been up here for months. Would it really have been that hard for me to just bring him some flowers? At least I’m doing it now. Better late than never, right? I tell myself that, but the feeling of guilt still resides in my stomach.

I take the flower impersonators out and refill the vase with water. The church bells start to ring right as I drop the peonies in.

“Those are pretty flowers.” Says a voice that is unmistakably Marco’s. My heart leaps up into my throat. _I wasn’t imagining it._ _I’m not crazy._ I spin around and there he is, standing above me. I can feel my heart pounding in my ears as I will myself not to cry. I remind myself that this Marco doesn’t know me, and I don’t want his first, well, second impression of me to be ‘that guy who is always crying’.

Once I calm down, I try to flash him a smile, but it ends up feeling forced. I’m happy to see him, I really am. But my body isn’t ready for happiness yet. I glance at the vase again. “Peonies. They were your favourite.” Marco gazes at them as I stand up.

“I didn’t think you’d come back, Jean.” Just hearing him say my name again makes tears well up in my eyes. I try to wipe them away before he notices. My heart starts to regain its normal pace as the initial adrenaline of seeing Marco again starts to seep out of me. In its place comes the warm feeling that is a side effect of being around Marco. Much to my surprise, my mouth starts spouting coherent sentences before my brain can even put the words together.

“I had to see you again.” I take a moment to just look at him. To take it all in again. His freckles. His bright eyes. His messy mop of hair. It’s all the same. All like it always was. It’s the same face that I would wake up to nearly every morning. Only paler. Much paler. And, well, not alive.

“Why? After I made you cry like that. I never apologised…” he looks genuinely sorry. I want to hug him so badly. To tell him that’s it’s not his fault, that everything is okay without even having to speak. But I know that’s not possible.

“No, no that wasn’t your fault. I was just really surprised to see you.” Marco cocks his head to the side ever so slightly.

“Why?”

A sad sigh leaves me. I’m going to have to spell it out for him.

“Do you know where you are, Marco?” His name feels unfamiliar on my tongue after so long without using it. It’s a welcome unfamiliarity, though.

He looks around of a second before turning to face me again.

“A graveyard.”

“Yes. Do you know why?” I’m thankful that my body is still holding it together. This is hard as it is. I don’t need to start crying on top of it.

Marco ponders for a second before pursing his lips.

“I’m… dead, aren’t I?” He says it as a fact, not a question. My breath hitches in my throat. In the last year I’ve learnt so many ways of telling people what happened to Marco without using that word. And now here he is, saying it to my face. Even though so much time has passed, it still feels like a stab to the chest.

“Didn’t you notice?” I ask him. It comes out sounding almost mean, like I’m ridiculing him for not realising it. He doesn’t look sad, though, or confused. For once, I can’t tell what he’s feeling. Do ghosts – that’s what I’m assuming he is – even feel?

“I never really thought about it.” Marco replies, scratching the back of his head. “I guess it makes sense though.” Then he looks back at me. “You’re not dead though, are you?” I shake my head. “Then how…”

“I- I don’t know.” We both fall silent. I try and fail to stifle a yawn. It’s getting cold, so I pull the hoodie over my head. The sun is gone and my surroundings are all a hazy shade of blue. I can see Marco clearly, though. He’s almost glowing. Maybe that’s what ghosts do; they glow.

The seconds seem to drag out forever. Every ring of the bells vibrates through the air. And then they stop, and if feels like they’ve left a hole in the evening sky. I sit down on the already damp grass, leaning against another gravestone. Marco sits down beside me.

And that’s when I realise, with absolute horror, that I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t want this to end, whatever this is. I want to stay here with him and talk to him, talk _with_ him. But how can I do that if I don’t say anything?

 I lift up my head again and give Marco a shaky smile as my mind frantically searches for something, _anything_ to say. Why is it that my mind has gone blank in a moment like this? I can’t ask him what it’s like to be dead. Can I? I desperately scan my brain for something else to say, but I always keep landing on that.

I start to open my mouth, already regretting the question I’m about to ask. But to my relief, Marco beats me to it.

“Who are you?” The question catches me off guard. He asked me the same thing yesterday. And I told him.

“I’m Jean Kirstein.” I tell him again, the uncertainty so clear in my voice that even I recognize it. Marco just shakes his head and laughs lightly.

“I know your name but I mean, who are you in relation to me? You’re the only person to come visit me like this. And from the way you’re looking at me, I think you were important to me in some way.”

I can feel myself starting to blush at his words. Are my emotions really that apparent? I run my hand through my hair before meeting his gaze again.

I could lie to him. Tell him I’m just a lonely stranger. Save myself the pain of having to watch him sit here, without a clue as to who I am, who _he_ is. But I can’t do that. I can’t do something like that to Marco.

I can’t tear my eyes away from his.  I don’t even know if I want to. I could lose myself in those eyes. Even now, in this almost translucent state, his eyes carry more life than any other living person I’ve seen. He’s so expectant. So curious. He can’t wait to find out what I’m about to tell him.

“I was your boyfriend.” No, it was more than that. “Partner. Significant other. Whichever way you want to put it.”

Marco’s eyes widen. For a split second, I’m afraid he’ll reject me. I’m afraid he won’t believe me and laugh in my face. _Don’t be ridiculous._ I’m not. _That won’t happen._ It might.

My mind races through every possible response he could give me in the four seconds it takes Marco to reply.

He pulls away from my eyes but mine stay focused where his once were.

“I’m so sorry. Oh my god I’m so sorry.” According to my mind, him apologising wasn’t a possible response. I blink, then lean towards him.

“Marco, you haven’t done anything wrong.” His head is turned away. He looks like he’s about to cry. No. Please don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll cry too.

“I understand why you were crying yesterday.” He whispers. “I’m sorry for being so blunt, for not remembering…”

“Marco, it’s not your fault,” This is wrong. Marco was always the one comforting me. He was always the positive one. I don’t know how to deal with this. I can’t stand seeing him like this.

I try to place my hand on his shoulder, only to remember that I can’t. I leave it hanging in mid-air. “It’s okay now.” I murmur. “Don’t worry about it.” He shakes his head and covers his face with his hands.

“This must be so hard for you.” He mumbles. I stop myself short of telling him that it is.

Marco lifts up his head again. “How long were we together?”

I give him a sad smile. “A bit more than five years.”

“Until I-”

“Yeah.” I watch as Marco processes all this. His expression changes from sadness to happiness to confusion to a mix of all three.

“I’m so sorry-”

“Marco, please don’t.” I cut him off, leaning back against the gravestone. I’m tired of everyone apologising for something that isn’t their fault. It was like this after his funeral, and for months after that. Every person that came up to me would say ‘I am so sorry’. I know they meant well, but it started to get really aggravating. And I can’t deal with Marco saying the same thing.

“Five years is a long time,” Marco continues almost cautiously. I regret snapping at him. “I’m sor- I feel bad that I don’t remember any of it.”

I almost smile to myself. Marco was always quick to pick up on things other people didn’t like. He never made the same mistake twice. Not once. I guess this is one part of his personality that stayed with him, even if his memories didn’t.

“It’s not your fault.” I tell him again. “Maybe that’s just how it works.” Silence dominates between us. I find it odd seeing Marco like this. He was always cheerful and positive, even when I wasn’t. Sure, he had sadder moments, but never like this.

I hear him take a sharp breath, like he used to right before he asked someone a question.

“Can you tell me about me?” I must look confused because he quickly adds, “I mean, could you tell me about my life? What it was like. What I was like…”

I blink once. Twice.

“I could try.” Marco immediately perks up, shuffling closer to me. I take a deep breath.

When someone asks you to tell them about 23 and a half years of their life, where do you start?

“You were born on the 16th of June. I don’t know where you went to primary school, but I know you went to secondary school somewhere in the capital-”

“Wait.” Marco holds up a hand. “Don’t tell me like you’re reading from an official document. Tell it like… you’re reading from a diary. Or looking through a photo album.”

I clear my throat and start again.

“You were born on the 16th of June,” I pause for a moment, trying to remember all the little memories Marco shared with me all over the years. “You had a cat named Oscar which would scratch everyone, including you, but you loved it anyway.”

As soon as I remember one, another one pops up. I fumble to get them all out before I forget.

“You used to pick flowers for your neighbour when you were younger. You nearly drowned in a river when you were five, but your mother saved you. She actually thought you were going to be a girl, so you ended up wearing only pink and yellow clothes for the first month of your life. You started playing the piano when you were nine. You didn’t like it at first, but you soon started to love it.” I keep going, pulling together every random fact about his childhood that I can remember. Even things he didn’t tell me but I just happened to see in a photograph. He had a red bike. His mother had a blue dress. Things like that. Marco doesn’t say anything for the whole duration of it. Not until I mention school.

“Did we go to the same primary school?” Marco asks. He’s hanging on to my every word. His eyes are practically gleaming.

I shake my head. “I don’t really know much about your primary school years… I know you were obsessed with birds at one point. You knew the calls of all the birds from where you lived. You even taught me a few, but I could never remember them. We didn’t meet until high school. Until your last year of high school, actually. You were a year above me.”

“And how did we meet?”

I smile as the memory enters my mind. Up until now, thinking about it just made me sad. But now I’m finally welcoming it back into my head.

“You lived nearby, so you took the bus to school every day. My house was further away, though, so I was in the dorms. The dormitory building was really close to some of the school buildings. And, um-”

“What were they like? The buildings.” Marco interrupts me. I don’t mind, though. Marco always wanted to know more. I’m glad that he’s interrupting me. He doesn’t look as sad as he did a few minutes ago.

“Big. Grey. None of them had more than three floors,” I furrow my eyebrow, trying to remember the layout of the school. It feels so long ago, even though only… 5 years have passed since I left that school. That’s longer than I thought. I hadn’t even realised. I guess time flies even when you’re not having fun.

“There were four buildings in total,” I tell him, picking up a twig and starting to draw in the small patch of dirt where the grass decided not to grow. I can barely see it, but I have a feeling that Marco can. “Five if you count the dorm block. They all had huge windows, but you could only open a few of them. Some of the staircases were one way, but everyone tended to ignore that. There was a park type thing here,” I point to a spot between the four main buildings. “With some benches. I’m making it sound like a huge school, but there were about 800 of us, maybe a little more. Where was I going with this again?”

“You were telling me how we met.”

“Oh, yeah. You see this building?” I point to my dirt drawing. “We called it C Block. There were just art studios and music rooms on the top floor. And this building,” I point to the one closest to it. “That’s the dorm block. We had two piano rooms as well. And, well uh, one day in the beginning of my third year, I think it was a Tuesday, my roommate decided to invite some friends over without telling me. I had an exam the next day though, and studying in a room of three noisy teenagers isn’t fun. So I went down, well, up to one of the piano rooms, because no one ever used them and they were bound to be empty.  
It was October, but it was sunny, so I had the window open. It was a small room, with a desk and a piano pressed into the corner. I took out my books and studied for about two minutes before I heard it. Someone else was playing the piano. Usually something like that wouldn’t have bothered me, but I was already pretty annoyed, and whoever was playing-”

“Was it me?” Marco asks me, but he’s grinning like he already knows the answer. A grin forms on my lips to match his.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that. Anyway, you were slamming the keys, hitting them quickly and in no obvious order. You were playing a piece, but it really didn’t sound like that. To be honest, I thought that maybe someone was angry and just venting on the piano. There was a pause, and I thought ‘yes, now I can study’, but then the slamming continued. I was really fed up at that point. Do you know what it’s like when you really need to study but there isn’t peace anywhere?” Stupid question, Jean. Stupid question.

Marco frowns. “Not really…”

“Uh, it’s frustrating. I tried closing the window, but I could still hear it. So I opened the window again, stood over the piano in my room and started hitting the keys myself. I thought that maybe if I did it too, you wouldn’t be able to concentrate. And it worked. The piano playing from the other building stopped, so I stopped too.”

The grin returns to Marco’s face.

“But then you started playing again, and I immediately started hitting the keys once more. Everything was quiet for a few moments, then I heard the playing _again_. I was ready to send back another round of key slamming when I noticed that this time, it was different. You pressed only three keys. Three notes. So I did the same. Then you pressed four more, slower this time. I sat down at the piano, and replied with four more notes. It turned into some kind of duet. You’d play five notes, I’d reply. We continued like this for a few minutes, and then you just stopped replying. Despite how annoyed I was earlier, I was actually enjoying this duet with a stranger. I looked out of the window, and there you were, on the third floor of C Block, right across from me, grinning.” The story is so cliché. Like something out of a romance novel. But that’s how it happened.

“And then?” Marco’s face is beaming. He’s absorbing every single word, locking it all away inside of him, scared he’ll forget again.

“And then we didn’t talk for two weeks.”

“What? How come? Were you scared?” I shake my head, then nod quickly. Marco laughs, sending a wave of warmth through me. It’s been so long since I heard his laugh. I feel like crying. But I can’t cry now. I have to finish this story for Marco.

“I was a little scared, but that wasn’t it. You were a year older than me, we had different time tables, and we didn’t even know each other. From the day we sort of played piano together, I started noticing you. You were out on the bench, reading a book. In the hallways, talking to your friends. I even saw you walking home a few times. I started going to the piano room as often as I could to see if I could catch glimpses of you, to listen to your music. You never played any wild pieces after that. I asked you once, when we were already together, whether that was because of me.”

“And what did I say?”

“I… I can’t actually remember. You probably just kissed me.” Marco just sits there, beaming at me. I swear his smile is infectious. The urge to kiss him rises up inside me, and I’m already starting to lean forward before I remember that actually, I can’t. Sadness wells up inside me again. I can’t tell if Marco has a sixth sense for or whether I’m just that transparent with my emotions, but he shuffles even closer to me, like he knows that he needs to encourage me to keep talking, otherwise I’ll just stop.

“And?”

“And what?”

“How did we meet?”

“I just told y-” Marco shakes his head.

“We still haven’t _met,_ only seen each other.”

“Oh. Aha. You have a point.”

“So?” He’s still smiling at me, his eyes full of expectation. Even when he isn’t grinning, the corners of his mouth are still turned up ever so slightly. A permanent smile. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Well, after that Tuesday, 17 year old me couldn’t stop thinking about the incredibly cute boy that he had seen from the window.” Marco giggles. Actually _giggles._ ‘The heart of a child locked up in the body of a man,’ my mother used to tell me. She’s probably right.  
“So I started trying to place myself where I could see you, maybe even bump into you. I never had any intention of actually _talking_ to you, though. I had no idea what I would do if I found you. I quickly realised that you practised piano every afternoon after school; you were one of those kids that took extra music classes as well as the normal ones.  
I went down to the piano room every day. Your classes sometimes finished earlier than mine, so I didn’t always get there before you started playing. A few times it happened that I was running down the stairs and I could already hear you playing, well into a piece. Sometimes I would study in the room, sometimes I would sit below the window, out of sight, and read a book or just listen to you play. You never stayed for long, maybe an hour at most.  
On a Wednesday, two weeks after our ‘duet’, I went up to the piano room, books under my arm. But when I pushed the door open, you were already in there. I was so shocked, that I didn’t even move.”

“Why were you shocked?” He’s lying on his stomach now, head propped up on his hands.

“Because you were wearing lacy lingerie.” Marco gasps and his face contorts. I burst out laughing.

“I’m joking, joking! I just didn’t expect you to be there.” Marco starts laughing too. When he stops, I try to send a smile in his direction, but it turns into a yawn.

I lean my head back against the gravestone and stare out into the night sky. The moon is just starting to rise. “So I walked into the room, and there you were. I didn’t know what to say. Not just because you were in the dorm building, in the piano room that I had claimed as my own. But you were wearing _glasses._ ”

Marco snorts.

“No, hear me out. I can’t even describe how good you looked in them. I was still figuring out my sexuality at that point, but when I saw you in those glasses, every doubt I had left got thrown out the window. I stood there, and you turned to me and said ‘Sorry, all the other music rooms were taken. My professor said I should come here. Is that okay?’ I just nodded because frankly, I was terrified. But when I didn’t move you said, ‘If you want to use the room too I don’t mind sharing.’ Then you saw the books under my arm and added, ‘Noisy roommate?’. I nodded again because at that point it was all I could do. Even though you were only one year older the gap between us felt so much bigger, and honestly, that was the first time an older attractive boy had ever spoken to me. When I actually stepped into the room, you stuck out your hand and told me your name. I shook your hand and told you mine. Then I sat down under the window and read my book while you played the piano. That was the first time we met.”

“Were all the other music rooms _really_ full?”

“I have no idea. What do you think?” I look down at Marco, but he’s all blurry. I rub my eyes to make them focus again.

“I think you should go to sleep.”

“I’m not that tired.” My own body betrays me and lets out a yawn.

“You should go. Save some stories for tomorrow.” I gaze down at him. His speckled face. His messy hair. His bright eyes. And I don’t want to leave.

“What if I go to sleep right here?”

“Are you allowed to?” I shrug.

“I’ll leave at daylight.”

“Okay, then.” I lie down, knowing that it’s very unlikely that I’ll get any sleep. But with Marco here, I feel like there’s still a possibility. The damp grass doesn’t feel very comfortable against my body, and I know that using my arm as a pillow will cut off the circulation. But I don’t care about that right now.

“Goodnight, Marco.” I whisper into the night sky. He leans over me, replacing my view of the stars with his face.

“Goodnight, Jean.”

The last thing I see is his smile.

 


	4. Night Two

I wake up as soon as the sun rises, squinting at my surroundings. I try to lift myself up, but one of my arms is completely numb. It gives out as soon as I try to put my weight on it, sending me slipping back onto the ground. I attempt to sit up again, this time using my other arm.

My clothes are damp, and my side hurts from where I was lying on the ground. I run a hand through my hair.

Marco.

I twist my head to the side, my eyes frantically jumping back and forth, searching for any sign of him. But he’s already gone. I sigh, disappointed that I didn’t get to see him again, annoyed that I didn’t wake up earlier. Next time, I’ll bring my phone and set an alarm. Next time, I won’t even go to sleep.

What did Marco do after I fell asleep? Did he sleep, too? I don’t think ghosts actually sleep. Did he just sit there, watching me? Or did he leave straight away? What if he tried to wake me up before he left? What if…

I take a deep breath. In, out. It doesn’t matter right now. I’ll save these questions for later, ask him when I come back again tonight. I notice my dirt drawings from the night before, half rubbed out from where I lay down on them. I smile down at them briefly before rubbing them out.

I pick myself up of the floor, brushing the dirt off my jeans as I do. Thankfully, my legs are still fully functional. My arm starts to tingle as feeling returns to it.

As I side step out from between the gravestones, I try to figure out what the time is. Probably around 5:30. I’ve never been up this early before.

I decide to take the bottom path out of the graveyard. That way there’s less of a chance that someone will see me. The gate creaks as I push it open. I don’t know who would come up here as early as this, but hey, it’s a village, anything is possible.

A strange sense of calm sweeps over me as I make my way back to my house. Everything is quiet. Even the birds have only just started singing, their songs still quiet and few. There isn’t even a breeze, meaning that all the trees are just standing there like they’ve been frozen in time.

I come to the crossroads, but instead of continuing straight towards my house, I turn left and head down into the village. There’s no sign of human life anywhere. It’s so quiet, so peaceful. The sun is rising above the houses, casting a yellow glow on everything I see.

I pass all the houses with their shutters still shut, their gates still locked. It feels like I’m the only person in the whole village. Like something happened, and I was the only one that stayed behind. I wish that it could always be this quiet. Without the barking dogs. Without the rumbling tractors. Without the occasional screaming child. I almost prefer it this way.

I reach a bend in the road, but instead of following it, I turn around and make my way back home. I take my time strolling up the road. In a way, I dread returning to my empty house.

I pull the key out of my pocket. Miraculously, it didn’t fall out. I stare at it for a second before dropping it back into my pocket. I’ll go in at one point, just not yet.

I cross over to the patch of grass beside the house. When we first moved here, there were only a few shrubs around the edge, providing anyone on the road with a clear view of the garden. But since then they’ve grow, as have the trees that I helped Marco plant, providing me with at least a little cover. I sit down on the grass, which is still damp from the morning dew. My clothes are damp as it is. An ant crawls over my leg. I flick it off.

I remember when Marco and I first bought this house. It was surprisingly cheap. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that it’s right beneath a church, right beneath a graveyard. But we didn’t mind. From here, it only takes 15 minutes by bus to get to the centre, where we both went to university. And his grandma used to live here. It was perfect.

I remember when I told my mother I was moving out of the family home and moving in with Marco. She was surprised, to say the least. ‘Are you sure?’ she kept saying. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ I kept replying. When she realised there was no talking me out of it, she gave in and helped with the move. She even gave me a set of plates to take with me. They’re probably still sitting in the back of some cabinet, along with the bread bin that Marco’s mother gave him.

The thing we had the most trouble with was Marco’s piano. It isn’t a grand piano or anything, but it’s not just a keyboard, either. It took us an age to get it into the back of the car, and even longer to get it out. It’s still in the house, in the back room, along with a lot of other of Marco’s things. Old school books. New books, waiting to be read. Various bags. Postcards. We used to use it as a kind of storage room. Most things that went in there rarely came out again.

I still go in there from time to time. The piano, though, I never touch. The last piece that Marco played is still waiting on top of it, covered in dust. I can’t bring myself to touch it.

When Marco was still around, the house would fill with music every afternoon. Now it’s just quiet.

I take a deep breath, feeling the air fill my lungs. I breathe out just as slowly. Then I lie down. The grass tickles my skin, and I’m very aware of the bugs all around me. I don’t mind. I close my eyes.

I open them sometime later. The bells are ringing. Seven o’clock. There’s a tabby cat purring in my ear, paws on my shoulder. I peer down at the cat. This is not my cat. I don’t even have a cat.

“Go home,” I tell it, pushing it off my shoulder and earning a discontented meow. I pick myself up off the ground and head to my front door, this time unlocking it and going inside. My clothes reek of damp grass. I bung them in the washing machine before turning on the shower. The hot water feels nice against my cool skin.

Unsurprisingly, I find myself thinking about Marco. Not the Marco I met when I was 17, but the one I met two days ago. I feel like I’m meeting him all over again. I feel almost like I did 6 years ago, when I started to fall for him.

The water turns cold, forcing me to get out of the shower. The boiler is probably another reason why the price of this place was so low.

I pull on a fresh t-shirt and pants before fixing myself a breakfast of dry cereal, since I forgot to buy milk, and water, since I don’t even have any juice. I’ll have to go out today. I don’t even know if there’s any bread left.

When I check my wallet, I realise that I might have to take Armin’s offer a little more seriously. My mother has been helping with the basic bills since Marco’s been gone, and I’ve been using my savings to pay for everything else. But I can’t keep going on like this. I’ve already used up a good portion of my savings, and it won’t be long until they’re all gone.

I shove the wallet in my pocket and grab my house key. Once I’m out of the house and the door is locked, I start making my way up the road to the bus stop. I haven’t taken the bus in a while. I don’t check the bus times, but I don’t think I’ll need to.

The walk takes me less than 10 minutes. When I reach the bus stop, there’s only one other person there. A girl. Judging from her bag, I’m guessing she’s a student. She looks familiar. Might be someone from the village. I check my phone. 7:43. Her being here is a good sign. There’ll probably be a bus soon.

My assumption was correct. A bus pulls up only a few minutes later. The girl jumps on and joins a few other school-goers in the back. They’ll be late for class at this rate, but they don’t seem to care. I take a seat near the front.

Barely any of the shops are open when I arrive in the centre. I buy the food first, taking my time in each isle. Only later do I realise that it was a bad idea. I now have two bags full of food to carry around with me. On the bright side, I won’t have to go shopping for another week or two. I spend an hour browsing a bookstore. I see that my favourite author from high school released a new book. For some reason, it makes me smile. I end up walking out without buying anything.

The sun is out, so I sit on a bench and help myself to one of the bread rolls I bought earlier. I still don’t understand why white bread is so good. It’s just flour and water. There is no reason for it to taste so good. But it does.

There isn’t any reason for me to be contemplating the taste of white bread, either, but here I am. I guess some things in life don’t need a reason to happen.

I take the next bus back home. The rest of the day passes like any other. I unpack the groceries. I hang the laundry. I have something to eat. I finish tidying up the books that I left in a mess on the floor yesterday. At around five I decide to go to sleep. If I’m going to stay up tonight, I need to rest now.

I’m violently woken up by my alarm a few hours later. I completely forgot that I ruined the speaker on my phone when I dropped it on the road a few days ago. And now, instead of ‘Moonlight temple’, my phone is blasting out something akin to the sound of nails being dragged down a blackboard combined with a cross between an angry cat and a vacuum cleaner.

I launch myself off the couch, desperately reaching for my phone. I swipe my finger across the screen, letting out a sigh of relief as the screeching ceases.

It’s cooler tonight. I wrap the hoodie around my waist again and head out, this time remembering to take my phone with me. The walk up to the church feels shorter than yesterday. It’s only when the gate to the graveyard comes into sight that I realise just how much I’ve been looking forward to this. To seeing Marco again.

I enter through the top gate again, although this time I’m not the only one here. I see an older man standing in the bottom end of the graveyard. I’ve seen him around before, but I don’t think he lives here. I really hope he leaves before Marco shows up. I don’t know if anyone else can see Marco, and I don’t think I could talk to him if somebody else were here.

I change the water for the flowers, then crouch down by his grave. It’s getting dark. The man still hasn’t left. I check my phone. It’s nearly ten past nine. The bells will ring any minute now. I sit there impatiently, silently willing the person to leave. _Please, this is the only part of my day that I look forward to. Please don’t mess it up for me._

My gaze stays fixated on the man, in the hope that maybe, if I stare at him for long enough, he’ll leave. I don’t think he’s even noticed me. He’s muttering to himself, loud enough for me to tell that he’s speaking, but too quiet for me to make out a single word.

I hear the sound of rope rubbing against stone. The bells are about to ring. But the man is still there, crouched down beside a gravestone. Dread starts to set in. I’ll have to pretend that I can’t see Marco. I’ll have to not speak to him. What if he just leaves after that?

But as soon as the first bell rings out, the man shoots upright and marches straight out of the bottom gate, covering his hands with his ears. I follow him with my eyes until I can’t see him anymore, just to make sure that he’s really gone.

I turn my head back to Marco’s grave, and there he is, peeping out from behind it.

“Hey, Jean.” A grin naturally forms on my lips to match his.

“Hi, Marco.” I stand up. Marco walks out from behind the gravestone and steps next to me. Even now, he’s still a few centimetres taller than me.

“I missed you today.” I tell him. My chest starts to ache as I realise just how much I actually missed him. I spent the whole day waiting for the moment when I could return to him.

“I’m here now,” he replies, still smiling. “How was your day?”

I shrug. “Nothing special. I went shopping.”

“Did you buy anything nice?”

“Not really. Just food.” Marco nods. He’s made an effort to make as little small talk as possible for it to still be deemed polite. But, even though he doesn’t show it, I know he’s impatient.

“So, what story are you going to tell me today?”

Marco drops down, assuming yesterday’s position. I join him on the ground.

“You tell me.”

Marco tilts his head, not quite sure what I mean.

“Ask me something and I’ll do my best to tell you.” I explain.

“Hmm…” Marco bites down on his bottom lip as he thinks. “How did we start dating?”

I had a feeling he’d ask that. I spent quite a portion of my day thinking about it. I clear my throat.

“Quite a few things happened before we actually started dating. The first and most important one, I guess, happened in the piano room. We both started going there every afternoon. The first few times you still told me that all the other music rooms were taken, but you stopped once you realised I was actually glad to have you there.”

“Was I a bad liar?”  I almost snort.

“You were terrible at it.” Someone only had to know he was lying once, and then they’d be able to tell for all the other times. I lean back against a gravestone.

“Anyway, I would sit there, and you would play the piano. Sometimes we would chat. You’d ask me about my book or about what I was drawing, and I’d ask you about your piano piece. Sometimes I’d even work up the courage to ask you for help with my schoolwork. At one point, we discovered that we liked some of the same bands, so we talked about them, too. If I heard anything about a new album being released, you were always the first person I’d tell. We ate lunch together once or twice, but even that was rare. And our friend groups never mixed, so what we had between us stayed in that room.”

“And what did we have between us?”

“Just friendship, at that point.” I pause. “Uh, where exactly was I going with this?” Somehow, I keep managing to surprise myself with how easily I can get sidetracked.

“The first and most important thing that happened before we dated.” Marco reminds me.

“Oh, yeah. It happened one of those afternoons that we were in the music room. I think it was November. I didn’t have any more tests that week, and the book I had with me wasn’t as interesting as I hoped. So I was just watching you play. The way you played was incredible. It was like your fingers were flying over the keys, barely touching them before moving on to the next. I couldn’t understand how that could equal to such nice music, but somehow, it did.  
That day I was staring at you even more than I usually did, and you noticed. You smiled at me, and I tried my hardest not to blush. Then, you asked me if I wanted to play a piece with you. I think you assumed I could play the piano because I replied to you that time, but to be honest, I wasn’t that good at it. While I was thinking of a polite way to decline, you were already shuffling to the edge of the seat, making space for me. At that point, it would’ve been even more awkward for me to refuse than to actually sit next to you, so I did.”

“What were my glasses like?” I blink down at him.

“What?”

“My glasses. Last time you said that I had them, but you never said what they looked like.” I furrow my eyebrows in an attempt to remember.

“Uh, they were black. Rectangular but slightly rounded? I can’t remember them very well, except that you looked good in them. You stopped wearing them a few weeks after I saw you in them, much to my disappointment. I think you only needed them for reading, anyway.”

Marco seems pleased with my answer. When I don’t say anything else he nods his head lightly, encouraging me to continue.

“So, uh, I sat next to you. And you said we’d play a really simple duet. You told me the title but I can’t remember it because I was too fixated on the fact that I was sat so close to you. Then you started showing me the keys that I was supposed to press. I paid attention for the first few notes, but then I just stared at you. I watched your mouth move as you spoke, but I didn’t hear the words. I was so close to you that I could count the freckles on your cheeks. I just stared at you, and tried to figure out how I had even managed to get into a situation like this.”

I pause, taking a moment to breathe in, breathe out. The memories are swirling in my head. I need to slow down. I’m almost embarrassed to be explaining it all in this way. I glance at Marco. He’s gazing at me with the same gleam in his eyes as yesterday, taking it all in, trying to create a story out of a few words.

I open my mouth to continue, but end up smiling at the ground. Despite my efforts, the one thing I didn’t want to think about has decided that now, right now, would be a good time to enter my mind. Something between a laugh and a sigh leaves my throat.

“What is it?” Marco immediately asks. I can’t see his face, but I know he’s not smiling anymore.

“I just-” I run my hand over the back of my head. “I’ve never told anyone about this. I never told anyone the full story of how we met, either. We both knew how it happened. It was no one else’s business.”

I feel my eyes start to well up. I press my palms against them, willing them to stop.

 _It’s okay, it’s okay._ Not really. _It’s not that big a deal._ It kind of is. _Just get on with the story._ I will.

The bells aren’t ringing anymore. I didn’t even notice when they stopped.

“Jean…” I shake my head, wiping my eyes.

 _Why now?_ You tell me. _It’s not too late to stop._ I think it is.

The words start to tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them.

“You should be the only person that I shouldn’t have to tell this story to. You’re the only other person that should know the other half of the story. I shouldn’t have to be telling you all of this again. You- you shouldn’t be _dead._ ”

Marco tries to calm me down again, but there’s no stopping me now.

“I want to enjoy this, I really do. I want to pretend nothing is wrong and I just come here to chat with you and I really want to be able to enjoy because I really like talking to you and it makes me feel all warm inside just being here with you again but at the end of the day it doesn’t change the fact that you’re _gone_ and when the sun rises I’ll have to go back to my empty house and I- I just. I miss you so much, Marco. So much.”

Tears start rolling down my cheeks. My throat is tight. I’m a mess. Marco’s not saying anything. He’s just sitting there, his eyes on me, looking almost as dismal as I’m feeling. No, I can’t have Marco feeling as if he’s at fault. I have to make that clear.

“But it’s not your fault.” I blubber as I frantically wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “I just- I don’t know how to deal with all of _this._ ”

This is stupid. This is so stupid. We could’ve had another nice evening. I could’ve told him stories and he would’ve laughed and I could’ve pretended this was fine and just enjoyed it for what it is. But no. I had to ruin it.

Marco’s expression isn’t changing. I drop my head down

Why am I so selfish? Marco is practically back from the dead, right here, talking to me, and that’s still not enough for me. A year ago, all I wanted was to be able to see Marco’s smiling face again. And now I have that. I got to see him smile, I got to see him laugh. That should be enough for me.

_But it’s not._

Now that I’ve seen his smile, I want to be able to touch him, too. I want to be able to wrap my arms around him. I want to be able to feel his arms wrapped around me. I want him to come home with me. I want him to be alive again.

But I know that’s not possible. And the fact that I know and understand that makes this whole thing even more stupid. I feel like a child that’s crying because their mum bought them sweets, but not their favourite kind.

“I’m sorry…” I mumble.

 _Childish. You’re being childish._ I know I am.

 _What will Marco think of you?_ I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

 _Stop crying._ I can’t.

 _Pull yourself together._ I’m trying. ****

My head is tucked between my knees, my arms wrapped over the top. I can feel Marco watching me, but he doesn’t say anything.

_Please, Marco, please say something. Anything._

After sometime, my crying turns into muffled tearless sobs. I feel so loud amidst the silence of the graveyard. I’m almost scared to lift my head. What if Marco hasn’t been saying anything because he left? What if he had enough and just left?

No, Marco wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.

Could he?

I take a few deep breaths, trying to get my breathing back to normal. My heart is still pounding in my ears, but it’s starting to slow.

“Jean?” _Marco._

I lift my head slightly, peeking out from behind my knees, and find myself staring into his eyes. He’s still here, sat closer to me than before, his face merely centimetres from mine.

I feel embarrassed, now. Bursting out like that in front of Marco. One second I’m telling him a story, and the next I’m breaking down. But sometimes it’s easier to cry than to try and deal with it all on the inside.

Marco leans back slightly, and I lift my head up properly, bracing myself for whatever he’s about to say. But he doesn’t say anything. He leans forward again and wraps his arms around me.

My eyes widen and my arms drop down. I feel it. Not physically, but I feel it. I feel him envelop me. It seeps into me from all sides. My breath hitches in my throat. I can feel it in my lungs, I can feel it in my stomach, I can feel it in my legs. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s not relief, either. It almost feels like I’m being compressed. I don’t like it, but I don’t dislike it either. I can’t connect it with anything. It’s just a feeling. A feeling that is Marco.

Marco pulls back, but the feeling lingers. He holds my gaze, still not saying anything. His eyes alone make me feel like bursting into tears again, but I manage to control myself. Marco stays silent for some time longer. I don’t know how much time passes. Five minutes? Ten? I spend most of it trying to make my heartbeat match my breathing, and the rest looking at the stars.

I hear Marco breathe in and quickly bring my head down to face him.

“I won’t say I know how you feel, because I don’t.” He says in a voice so soft I can barely hear it. “But I don’t think what you’re feeling is wrong.”

I wipe my nose with the back of my hand.

“When you want to laugh, you usually don’t hold back, right? That’s because laughing makes you feel good. I think that sometimes, you need to stop holding back those negative feelings. Because you need to feel them, too. I think.”

I nod. Marco waits another moment.

“Are you okay?” Breathe in. I run a hand through my hair, tugging at the roots. Breathe out.

“Yeah, yeah I think so.” I stretch my legs out, releasing my body from its cramped position. There’s an uncomfortable tension between me and Marco and I desperately want to get rid of it.

“Do you want me to continue the story?” I ask him. Marco nods.

“If it’s not too hard on you.” I wave my hand in front of me.

“It’s fine. I think these memories need a bit of air, anyway.” I pause. “Do you remember where I left off?”

Marco tilts his head. “I think you were at the bit where you sat next to me.”

“Oh, yeah.” I clear my throat and pick up the story. I want to move on as quickly as I can. I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. “You told me which keys to press, but I didn’t pay attention. When you asked me if I got them all, being the idiot I was, I told you that yes, I did.”

The memory starts to flow into my mind again. I’ve lost the little confidence I had before, and now every word feels awkward. I keep having to remind myself that this is Marco I’m talking to, that it’s him I’m talking about, that it shouldn’t be awkward.

“You started to play, and I played the few notes I managed to remember. Then you continued playing, and I realised that I had no idea what to press next. I tried as best as I could, guessing what to press from what little I remembered of what you told me. Then I messed up, pressing a key an octave lower than I should have. And your hand ended up landing on top of mine. You didn’t move your hand, and I didn’t attempt to move mine. I thought you would tell me off for not playing the right notes. But you just laughed. Not at me, but at the situation. I think.  
I turned my head towards you, hoping that I wasn’t blushing, only to find that you were already looking at me. If I wasn’t blushing earlier, I definitely was after that.”

Marco lets out a small laugh. It feels like a seal of approval. It starts to feel like my outburst didn’t happen at all. No, more like we acknowledged that it happened, but chose to move forward as if it didn’t. I can feel some of my confidence returning.

“When you stopped laughing, you didn’t turn your head back to the piano to continue playing like I thought you would. You held my gaze and smiled at me in a way that made me feel like I was melting from the inside out. Then you leaned forward ever so slightly and that was the point where I realised, ‘Oh god, these feelings are mutual’. I could see your eyes starting to close and then-²

“I kissed you?” I shake my head.

“I panicked. I could see what you were trying to do, I could see what was about to happen. And despite the fact that I wanted it to happen, I was terrified at the thought of it actually happening.”

“I don’t think I understand…”

“Don’t worry, neither do I. So I panicked, and pulled my hand out from under yours, accidentally pressing down on some keys as I did. You opened your eyes again and sat back upright, looking slightly ashamed of yourself. I felt bad, because now you felt bad. You mumbled a ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have,’ and I wanted to tell you that no, you didn’t do anything wrong, but I was in no state to even speak. I just bolted from the room, leaving my books behind. I ran back to my dorm room and locked myself in.”

“And then? What did I do?”

“I… I don’t know. I tried to avoid you for the remainder of the week. I don’t know whether you were avoiding me too, or if I was just that good at avoiding you.” My hands are lying limp between my legs. I wrap a piece of grass round my finger, just so that I have something to do.

“Why were you so scared?” I tug on the grass.

“I think there were a few reasons. I was inexperienced, and-²

“You’d never kissed anyone?”

“No, I’d never kissed a guy. And you were older than me. When I was around you I felt almost… intimidated.”

“Intimidated? I thought we were friends.”

“We were. But in the moments when we weren’t in the piano room, in those moments when your other friends showed up during lunch, you just felt like so much _more_ than me. Older, smarter, more talented, more popular, more everything.”

“More attractive?” Marco teases. I grin.

“Definitely more attractive.”

Marco smiles, looking down at the ground. Then he snaps his head back up as if he just remembered something.

“Wait, who was your first kiss, then?”

“Uh, some girl.”

“That’s all? No story behind it?” I give him a look.

“Do I have to?”        

“Yes.” I sigh, accepting defeat. You can’t refuse Marco. Especially when he’s looking at you like that. It’s simply impossible.

“She was my roommate’s adopted sister. I had a thing for her in my first year of high school. I was still too confident for my own good back then, to the point of being cocky. I think it was at the end-of-year party for our year, and at some point got involved with a game of truth or dare. Someone dared me to kiss her and of course, being the cocky person that I was, I believed that this way I would win her over. I kissed her, on the lips. When I pulled back, do you know what she said? She looked at me, she looked me in the eyes and said,” I pause for dramatic effect. “Ew. Then she returned to the game as if nothing had happened. I was horrified.”

Marco bursts out laughing. I don’t say anything else. Instead, I just appreciate the way Marco’s face scrunches up when he laughs. The way his eyes crinkle. The way his shoulders shake.

I’ll always want more. That’s a given. But for now, this is enough. I’ll make it enough. I’ll appreciate every little detail, focus on every single thing, and it’ll be enough.

When Marco recovers from his laughing, he asks me more about the girl. So I tell him. He asks me about my roommate, her brother. So I tell him. He asks me about my other friends, he asks me about his friends, he asks me questions that I can answer in a second and questions that I don’t even know the answer to. One question flows into the other, neither of us showing any signs of stopping. My eyes start to feel heavy, but I keep going, fuelled by Marco’s curiosity and my desire to quench it. When there’s a dip in the conversation, I watch the moon rising above us, a mere sliver shining down from the sky. Or I stare at Marco instead, trying to memorise every detail about his face.

I’m in the middle of explaining to Marco how I managed to get into a fight with my roommate in the library when I see it. A stream of light on the horizon, signalling the beginning of the sunrise.

“Marco, the sun is rising.” He turns his head to where I’m pointing.

“It’s beautiful.” It is. Unlike yesterday, the sky is pink.

“Red sky at morning, shepherd’s warning.” I say.

“What?”

“It’s a saying. The weather won’t be good today.”

“Oh.”

I turn back to Marco as the sun starts to peek out from behind the hills.

“Do you have to go now?” I ask him. He’s already starting to fade.

“I think so…”

“I’ll come back tonight.” I tell him. Marco grins.

“I can’t wait. See you later, Jean.”

“Bye, Marco.”

And he’s gone.


	5. Night Three

I stay put, staring at the space where Marco once sat. I remember his smiling face and imprint it on the inside of my skull.

Reluctantly, I stand up. My legs are half-asleep, so I shake them out. My clothes are damp, unsurprisingly. I turn my head to the side. The sun is halfway up. I’m starting to feel the early morning warmth, although it’s still cool.

A yawn escapes from my mouth, and only then do I realise how tired I am. After all, I stayed up all night talking to Marco. I don’t regret it, but my body is giving me hell for it now. Fatigue washes over me, and I’m tempted to lay down here and now. But I can’t do that. I run a hand through my hair, yawning again, then start to make my way down the hill and back to my house, ignoring the hunger clawing at my stomach.

I can barely keep my eyes open. As soon as my door is in sight, I fish my house keys out of my pocket and, with some difficulty, unlock the door. A cat rushes through my legs and into the house as I do, but I don’t have the energy to chase it out again. I know there isn’t any food lying around and most of the doors are closed. What’s the worst it could do?

I don’t even make it to my bedroom. I close the door behind me, locking it after a moment of thought. Then I take a few steps forward and collapse onto the couch, falling asleep almost instantly.

I wake up what seems like an age later. I glance at the clock on my wall. It’s 4:37 pm. I wipe my eyes then stretch my arms out. I start to lift myself up, but there’s a weight on my chest. I glance down. There’s a cat sitting on me. I squint at it. I think it’s the same cat that ran inside earlier.

I try to sit up, but the cat digs its claws into me. I flinch and try lifting it off me, instead.  As soon as I place it on the ground, it scuttles off to the front door. I sigh and unlock it, watching as the cat scampers away.

I make my way to the kitchen, stretching my arms above my head as I do. I make myself breakfast – can you even still call it breakfast at this time? I think this is taking the phrase ‘breakfast for dinner’ a little too literally.

There’s something unsettling yet strangely serene about waking up this late. The sun is setting instead of rising, shining in directly through the living room windows. It feels as if everyone is starting to slow down, to end things for the day, while I’m only just starting. I’m making the night time my daytime.

I still have four hours to kill before I can go to see Marco. I should’ve slept for longer. But I’m up now. Might as well do something useful.

I pad around the house, searching for something, anything I can do to pass the time. I weave through all the rooms in order, stopping in each one to do something. I make my bed, not that I sleep in it very often. When I reach the bathroom, I take a shower. I pair up all the odd socks that have been lying around for the past week. I even clean the mirror in the hallway.

The last room I come to is the back room. I contemplate not going into it, but since I’ve come this far, I might as well. I open the door into the room and just stand there. It’s messy, but I don’t want to tidy things up. Marco left them like this. I want to preserve what little of him there’s left in this house.

I scan the overflowing bookshelf that’s pressed between the piano and the wall. I can’t even tell what half of the things are anymore. I take a step closer, suddenly curious. I’m tempted to pull out some of the books and folders, just to see what they are. But I know that if I do that, everything will come toppling down.

One of the books catches my eye. It’s light blue with black writing on the spine. There’s another one next to it, this one a darker blue. I glare at them, trying to figure out what they are. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t get it. Then I remember.

They’re not books. They’re photo albums.

I completely forgot that we still had them. I thought they’d been packed away and put into the attic along with a bunch of other things.

I had a phase where I thought photos were the best way to preserve memories. Okay, that’s not true. To be honest, it started off because I thought that I’d look cool if I always had a camera with me. Connie is probably to blame, since it was he who told me ‘Chicks dig an artistic soul’ in my first year of high school. I didn’t like drawing, so photography was the next best thing.  

But, to the surprise of nearly everyone I knew, I got really into it. It was around that time that I started drawing, too. I’d spend hours choosing, printing and placing photos in albums. I stopped some time during my second year of university, but not before I managed to fill five whole albums.

I glance back at the shelf. If two of them are here, the other three can’t be far off. I carefully place my hand on the first album and, with quite a bit of difficulty, extract it from the shelf. I do the same with the second one.

Looking at them now, I see that they’re both albums from high school. The darker one is the first one I ever made, filled with pictures from my first and second year. I brush the dust off the top and start to flick through it.

The first few photos are sunsets and landscapes, a couple of the school, an odd flower here and there. It’s obvious that I had no idea what I was doing. It’s only when I get to the third page that the photos start to feature people. There’s one of Connie and me outside the school. We’re standing under a tree, both of us grinning wildly. I don’t remember taking it, but seeing it now makes me smile. I continue forward, only glancing at the photos before moving on. There’s one of me and Eren in the rare frame of time that we actually got on. There’s some from school events. There’s plenty of my friends and the times we hung out. There’s even a few sneaky pictures of Mikasa, the girl I used to like.

I reach the last page. There’s only one photo there. It’s bigger than all the others. Connie, Eren, Armin, Mikasa, Sasha and me, as well as some other classmates, all huddled together. It was Sasha’s birthday, and she invited the whole class, as well as some older kids. She failed a year, so she was friends with quite a few upperclassmen. We’re on the beach, our toes buried in the sand, smiles plastered on our faces.

I close the album and place it on the floor before reaching for the second one. This one is the third one I filled. There’s a photo glued on the very first page. Intertwined hands that I know belong to Marco and me. I don’t even have to look through it to know that this album will have a lot of photos of us in it. I decide against opening it and place it on the floor alongside the other album. Maybe I’ll take it with me tonight.

I turn back to the bookshelf. Two out of five albums are on the floor. Where are the rest of them? I start sifting through the shelves without actually moving anything. At first it’s just curiosity, but when I can’t find them after five minutes, it becomes a mission. I start looking everywhere. Behind the piano. Under my bed. Even in the kitchen cabinet, getting more frustrated with every minute that I can’t find them.

It takes me nearly an hour to find them all. One was in a box in the bottom of my closet, one was on the top of my bookshelf and the last one was in the attic. I carry them to the living room, balancing them on top of one another. Despite them not being too heavy by themselves, their combined weight is almost too much for me.  I drop them down on the rug in the hallway with a thud.

I stare down at the pile of albums. I can’t take them all with me. There’s no point. I settle on the second one, the one where Marco just beings to appear. I take a look at the clock, hoping that there’s not much time left. 6:23. I sigh. Still two hours and a half to go.

I remember how hungry I ended up being yesterday, well, this morning, and decide to take some food with me. Nothing much, just two sandwiches, an apple, a packet of biscuits and a bottle of water. I imagine Marco saying, ‘Are you sure that’s enough for eight hours?’ and add another bottle of water and some snacks. I’ll have something to eat before I go.

I put the food in a bag alongside the album and a hoodie. Then I put the bag by the door. I stare at it for a moment.

Once again, I’m stumped. I’ve run out of things to do.

I need to find a way of dealing with this. If I’m going to be staying up late and waking up even later, I need to find a way of filling the empty hours before I can return to the graveyard. I can’t just stare at the ceiling for hours. I’ll go crazy.

After another 10 minutes of aimless pacing, I end up sat at the dining table, sketchbook open in front of me. I try to draw, but every face turns into Marco’s. In the end, I give up and draw him instead.

I glance at the clock for the tenth time. This time, though, it’s nearly nine. I drop the pencil I was holding, not caring when I hear it fall onto the floor, and push away from the table, not bothering to return the chair to its proper position. I pull on my sneakers and grab my bag, barely remembering to lock the door behind me.

The grass is wet outside. It must have rained at some point. All I can do is hope that it won’t rain tonight. I don’t have an umbrella with me, and I’m not turning back now. On my way up to the church, I don’t stare down at the road like I usually do. Instead, I look up at orange and red clouds strewn across the sky. It’s pretty today. Prettier than usual. Now that I think about it, it was red this morning, too. Maybe the ‘red sky at night’ thing isn’t as reliable as I thought.

When I enter the graveyard, there’s no one else there, much to my delight. I place my bag beside Marco’s grave and make myself comfortable on the ground. The grass is still wet, so I scoot to the side until I’m sitting on the patch of cement between the graves. It’s warmer than it was last night. I can feel the rain in the air. Humid. That’s the word. It’s humid. I rest my head on my knees and wait.

The bells start to ring a few minutes later.

I close my eyes and count to three. One… two… three. I open them again and, as I had hoped, am greeted with Marco’s smile.

“Hey, Jean.”

“Hi, Marco.” I can already feel myself starting to get warmer. He positions himself on the floor next to me.

“I brought you something,” I tell him, my hands already moving towards my bag. Marco’s eyes flash with curiosity. I haul the bag into my lap and pull the album out, placing it on the floor between us. Marco stares at it for a moment, trying to work out what it is.

“What is it?” He asks, not taking his eyes off the green cover.

“A photo album.” Marco’s eyes practically sparkle.

“Are there photos of me in there, too?” He’s hoping there are. I can hear it in his voice. I nod. Marco quickly scoots over so that he’s sat beside instead of opposite me. He’s finding it hard to keep still.

“Sorry, it’s just that I can’t wait to see what I look like.”

My hand freezes over the cover. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Marco might not know what he looks like. He lost all of his memories, including those of himself.

“I didn’t… You really don’t know what you look like?” He shakes his head.

“I mean, I can look at my hands, and I can feel my hair, but my face…”

I swing the album open and quickly flick through the pages, stopping on the first photo I find of him. I place my finger next to his face. On the photo, not his actual face.

“That’s you.”

Marco stares at the photograph, transfixed by his own face. I take a closer look at it and see that it’s one of the many photos I took of him in the piano room. I never told him when I was about to take a photograph. I never really told anyone, to be honest. When Marco heard the shutter, he would just laugh to himself and shake his head. I would smile.

Marco lifts his hand up and carefully runs his fingers across the photo. I know he’s not actually touching it, but he might as well be.

“That’s me.” He says after a moment.

“Sure is.”

“It’s… I’m different from what I thought. Based on what you told me, I didn’t imagine myself like this.” I turn my head away from the photographs to look at him. His hand is still hovering above the photo.

“Good different or bad different?”

“Just… different. Not as… pretty, I guess.”

“You are pretty pretty.” I tell him. Marco laughs.

“Yeah, I guess so.” He’s so pure, free of all biases and social opinions, that even he can recognize his own pretty-ness.

He moves his hand to the photograph beside it, another one of him in the piano room, only this time he’s looking at the camera. The photos were probably taken seconds apart.

“You could’ve asked me, you know. About what you look like. I would’ve brought the album sooner.”

“It seemed like a silly question.” He gazes at the photo for a moment longer. “How old am I here?”

“Eighteen.”

“How old am I now? I mean, how old would I be?”

“You would have turned 25 three days ago.” Marco takes his eyes off the photograph and turns to me.

“Is that why you came to see me? Because it was my birthday?” I run a hand through my hair.

“I came because I heard you singing.” I try not to make it obvious that his singing was the only reason. If I hadn’t heard him, who knows when I’d even come up here. I don’t know if I would ever come up here. Not in the near future, that’s for sure.

“Oh.” He starts to turn back to the album, but I stop him.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, actually. If you lost all your memories, how did you know it was your birthday?”

Marco opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. He furrows his brow.

“I… I didn’t.”

“Then how…”

“I don’t know. The song just popped into my head. It seemed like the right time to sing it, so I did.” He pauses for a moment before adding, “Being dead is weird.”

I want to reply, but no words come to me. How do you even reply to something like that? I fumble for something to say before settling on another question.

“Can you see other dead people?”

“Sometimes. I’ve seen some only once. But there’s a boy up there,” He points to a grave closer to the church. “That I see every night. I tried talking to him once, but he didn’t want to speak.”

I turn my head to where he’s pointing. I can’t see anyone. I glance around the graveyard. I don’t see anyone but Marco. A feeling of unease starts to settle inside me.

“There’s a girl down there, too.” He points down to the bottom of the graveyard. He’s pointing at the same grave the I saw that man standing next to yesterday. Maybe that’s his wife? Daughter? Sister? “I spoke to her. She doesn’t remember anything about her life, either.”

The feeling of unease pokes at me again.

“How many are there around us now?” I ask him, my voice a whisper.

“You can’t see them?” I shake my head. Marco scans the graveyard before turning back to me. “Four others.”

The unease completely envelops me, tugging at my stomach. There are four other people around us. Dead people. I can’t see them, but they can see me. I can’t hear them, but they can hear me. They can hear every word I say. I’m powerless against them.

Suddenly I don’t want to speak anymore. I know they can’t do anything to me, but I don’t feel safe.  It feels like an invasion of privacy. I’m not just talking Marco anymore, but four other people I don’t even know. Have they been here the whole time? Have I been telling them the story, too, from the very first day? Marco said two of them are here every day. That means that I have. But I don’t want to share my past with them. _You already have_. They probably don’t care, anyway. _But you care._ All that I say is for Marco and solely for Marco.

_Not anymore._

Marco senses my unease. Even if he doesn’t really know me, he _knows_ me.

“Does knowing that they’re there make you uncomfortable?” I hesitate, then nod. Marco looks behind me, probably at one of the other ghosts, then turns back to me.

“Do you want to move?” I feel like a child. I want to say that, no, it’s fine, I’ll deal with it. But I know I couldn’t say that convincingly, even if I tried my hardest. If we stay here, I won’t be able to tell Marco stories of the past. He’ll notice. Then I’ll just feel stupid for lying. It’s easier to just tell the truth. So I nod. Marco stands up, extending his hand down to me.

“Come on,” He smiles at me, and I find myself smiling back. I lift up my own hand and try to take his. Only when my hand passes directly through his and we’re left there, both our hands suspended in the air, do I remember that actually, no, I can’t touch him. Somehow, we both managed to forget that substantial fact. I let my hand fall limp, neither of us quite sure what to do. After a moment, Marco starts to walk away from his gravestone. I snap the album shut, picking it up along with my bag and follow him. He leads me towards the church, going round the side and stopping by the back wall.

“Is this ok?” He asks without actually looking at me. I take a moment to look around. We’re tucked behind the back wall of the church. I can’t see any graves from here. Even though I know they’re just round the corner, it feels secluded. Safe.

“Yeah, it’s fine.” I slump down against the wall, letting myself slide down to the ground.

“Sorry for not mentioning them earlier.” Marco says, joining me on the grass. I shake my head.

“It’s fine.” I can tell that we’re avoiding what just happens. So I don’t mention it.

Silence drags out between us. I hate this. I hate not being able to talk to him. I hate little things like this throwing us off. I reach for my bag, pulling the album out again. I place it on the ground in front of us, opening it on the first page. Marco perks up when he sees it again. I can’t remember what’s in these albums, so it’s as much of an experience for me as it is for Marco. Only I can connect the photos with memories, Marco can’t.

“I started this album in my third year of high school.” I tell him. The first photo happens to be a group photo; me and a bunch of my classmates outside the school.

“Is that you?” Marco asks, finger hovering above the photo, immediately singling me out amongst my friends.

“Yeah, first day of our third year.” Marco moves on to the next photo.

“Is that Connie?” I spent half of last night telling him about my friends. I guess my story telling skills are as such that Marco can recognize people based solely on my descriptions.

“That’s him.” 

“And… Erin?” I have to hold back my laughter. It happened so many times that Eren would get his coffee cup back with ‘Erin’ written on the side. Even now, so many years later, I still find it hilarious.

“Eren.” I correct him. Marco slides his finger across the page, stopping over a boy with slightly longer blond hair.

“Who’s this?” I guess my descriptive skills aren’t as good as I hoped.

“That’s Eren’s best friend, Armin.”

“Oh, that’s what he looks like.”

We continue like this, back and forth. Marco pauses at every photo, double-checking names he’s unsure of, grinning at every photo he finds of me. I tell him the story behind every photo, be it long or short. For a few minutes, I still worry about the others hearing us. At one point, I ease up a bit. A while later, I stop caring altogether. Marco is the only thing of importance here.

A bit more than an hour later, a quarter of the way through the album, we come across the first picture of Marco. Despite the fact that I’m using the torch of my phone to illuminate the album and the initial blurriness of the photo, I still recognize him immediately. It’s not clear in the photo, but I know I took it in the piano room. It’s taken from a strange angle and Marco isn’t even looking at the camera, something that’s typical of all my sneaky photos. Looking back, I actually took quite a few sneaky photos. Now it just seems creepy.

“Is this the first photo you ever took of me?” Marco asks.

“Probably.” He stares at it for a moment longer.

“Did I know that you took it?”

“Probably not.” Marco laughs.

Marco doesn’t make another appearance in the album until a couple of pages later. This time the photo is focused and Marco is looking at the camera. He definitely knew about this one. As we move through the pages, the number of photos where Marco is featured steadily increases.

“Were we dating yet?” Marco says, pointing at a photo of both of us.

“No, not yet.” I turn the page.

“When did we start dating, then? You never finished the story.” I let the page fall down. He’s right. I never finished it.

“Oh, you’re right. Er… after the whole piano incident, I avoided you.  I was scared of ruining it even more-”

“I ruined it?” Bad choice of words, Jean.

“No, not you. I just felt like I had ruined it in the way I reacted and I was scared how I would react if I saw you again. I mean, I saw you once when I was walking back to my dorm block. I don’t think you saw me, but I panicked. Ended up walking all the way around instead of just crossing in front of you.”

“What about the piano room?” I shake my head.

“I stopped going. I walked by it a few times, half hoping to hear the familiar sound of you playing, but you never were.”

“Didn’t I even call you? Surely I tried to talk to you again.”

“You texted me every while and then. Called me once or twice. I always kept my replies short and never answered when you called.”

Marco called me the same day after he tried to kiss me. I was scared to answer. He texted me that evening, too. I didn’t reply. The next day he texted me again, asking if I wanted to hang out. I told him I had schoolwork. I didn’t, and spent the whole afternoon staring at my wall. When he texted me, I kept the replies short. Then I stopped replying altogether. I wanted to text back. I even started writing a message a few times. But every time, the message went from a simple ‘Hi’ to a three part paragraph which I deleted before I did anything I would regret.

“To be honest, I don’t think it would’ve been that bad if I had just talked to you. I think it would’ve made the whole thing easier. But the fact that I was prolonging it made it worse.”

“But if it was this bad, how did we even get together?” Fair point, Marco.

“You trapped me.”

“In a net?” I smile.

“No-”

“A net of love, then.” Now I laugh.

“Not quite. Maybe. What you did do was show up outside my class right before lunch. I think a week had passed since we last talked. I think you tried to get to me in the cafeteria a few times but I was never there, since I started going there later because I knew that you ate early so that you could practice piano. Somehow, you found out what lesson I had right before lunch and waited for me outside of the classroom. When I saw you, my first reaction was to turn the other way and pretend I hadn’t even seen you. But you saw me, and came up to me before I could escape.”

“You make it sound like I was trying to kill you.”

“In my mind, maybe you were.” Marco shakes his head.

“You sure had a weird way of dealing with romantic feelings.”

“Tell me about it.”

Marco glances down at the album, where a photo of two pairs of feet covers the whole page.

“So, what happened next?”

“You came up to me, and I had to pretend that I didn’t want to run as far away as possible. You were clever, you know, trapping me like that. You knew that because there were so many other people around us, I couldn’t get away. You invited me to come hang out at this café after school. You said that you invited some of your friends as well as some of mine. In a weak attempt to turn you down, I said that I had to study. You said that it’d be a group study thing, since we all had exams coming up. It was starting to seem weird how much I was refusing. People had seen us hanging out, so they knew you weren’t stalking me or anything. Surrounded by other people like that, I had no choice but to agree.”

“Did you actually go?”

“When I got back to my dorm room after school, Armin was there, unsurprisingly. However, it turned out that you had invited him to come along, too. He was one of my closest friends at the time and was really enthusiastic about the whole thing, so, an hour later, I found myself being pulled along to this gathering.”

I glance at Marco. His skin is emitting a pale blue glow. Very ghost like.

“We were already there, standing outside the door, when suddenly Armin got a phone call and announced that he couldn’t come with me before running back the same way we came. I thought about bailing, too, but I already had my hand on the door, so I pushed through anyway. I saw you straight away, sat alone behind a table meant for six people. I considered bailing again, but by then you had seen me, too, so I made my way over to the table.”

Memories of the café swirl in my head as I continue the story. Long forgotten details start to surface. I remember that I was wearing just a hoodie and jeans, and seeing Marco there in a jumper and shirt made me feel so self-conscious about the way I was dressed. I remember that right now, I’m also wearing a hoodie and jeans. Huh. Six years later and I still have the same fashion sense.

“Did my friends bail on me, too?” Marco asks when I’m quiet for too long.

“That’s what you told me when I sat down. But it seemed almost too convenient, you know? That both our friends bailed and we were left alone. I assumed that you had tricked me into meeting up with you, that you didn’t even invite your friends. And I was annoyed that I had fallen for it. So I left my books on the table and just stormed out of the café.”

Marco cocks his head. “I didn’t think I was the type of person to trick people like that.”

“That’s just it; you weren’t. In the back of my mind, I knew that. But too much was going on in my head at that point for me to think clearly. I was torn between going back to the café to apologise and running as far away as possible and never talking to you again. I didn’t understand what I was feeling and I just wanted it to stop.”

“So, what did you do?”

“Neither, actually. I didn’t get a chance, because you came running after me. I had barely taken three steps away from the café when you burst through the door and called my name. I kept walking, head down, but you caught up and walked beside me. You asked me to stop, to just talk to you for a second. I still couldn’t believe you had tricked me like that, so I yelled at you. But you just seemed confused. I thought you were playing stupid, but as it turned out-”

“I didn’t actually trick you.”

“Exactly.”

Marco had actually sent me a text before I even reached the café, saying that his friends couldn’t make it, asking if I still felt like coming. But I had turned off all notifications regarding him, and of course, I didn’t see it. In all, it was just an unfortunately timed mix of coincidences. Armin left me because Eren called him, saying that he mixed up the dates for his exams and needed help studying for the next day. I’m not sure why Marco’s friends bailed, but I’m sure they had their own reasons.

After we cleared that up, I felt guilty for being angry at him like that. I was pretty out of it at that point, and Marco made me sit down on a bench so I could gather my thoughts. I said sorry for yelling at him, and he said that he was sorry that it turned out like it did. Then he suggested that we go back to the café, at least to pick up our books. I gave in and went with him. We ended up at a table for two, sipping hot chocolate. Marco paid for me. 

“And then?” Marco’s eyes are gleaming.

“And then you asked me why I had been avoiding you. I knew you were bound to ask me at one point, but I still wasn’t ready for it. You could tell – you could always tell – and suggested we go for a walk. So we did. You have to understand that up until the point that I met you, I had always been sure of myself. I was always confident in my abilities. I never had trouble speaking, never had trouble keeping a level head. But then when I was with you, it was like none of that had ever happened. I tripped over my words, I couldn’t think straight,”

Marco smirks.

“And I was never sure of myself. We went back to the bench we sat on earlier, but I didn’t say anything. I just stared at my hands. So you said to me, ‘Is it because of what I did?’ and I remember wanting to run away, but then your eyes made contact with mine and I found myself telling you everything I had been scared to even think about and you just stood by me and listened and when I was done I felt so embarrassed because half of what I said didn’t even make sense and I just felt so stupid and-”

I take a moment to breathe. I get so flustered telling Marco all of this. It’s almost like I’m reliving that moment. I guess in a way I am. I haven’t thought about it for so long. At first there was no reason to, but then I just didn’t want to. I glance at Marco.

“And?” I let my mouth slip into a smile as I remember what happened next.

“And you took my hand, and I let you, because I didn’t know what else to do. You told me to breathe, so I did.”

We were past being ‘just friends’. That was clear at that point. It just wasn’t clear what we were, if we were anything at all. I had never been in a situation like that before. I had one or two girlfriends, sure, but those ended as soon as they had started, three weeks at most. I was in unknown territory. I think Marco was, too, but he didn’t show it. Not as much as I did, at least.

“Then you leaned towards me, just a bit. This time, though, you asked me if it was okay. I managed a nod, so you kissed me. Very lightly, very quickly. But a kiss nonetheless.”

Marco has a grin plastered across his face. I’m smiling, too.

“So that’s how we started dating.”

“Yeah,” We hold each other’s gaze, each thinking about the memory in our own way.

The urge to kiss Marco comes over me again. Not even kiss, just touch. Even a pat on the arm would be enough. It pains me that I can’t. I move my hand in his direction, anyway. Marco sees it and does the same. A small part of me still hopes that I’ll be able to touch him. But, of course, my fingers pass right through his. Our hands end up on top of each other, well, in each other, and we keep them there. I can’t feel his hand. If I had my eyes shut, I wouldn’t even know it’s there. Yet somehow, the fact that our hands are in the same place is oddly comforting. We’re not touching, no, but this is as close as we’ll get.

Marco looks back at the photo album.

“What happened after that?”

So I tell him. I tell him how I started going back to the piano room again, how I gradually stopped hiding from him. How we got back on good terms, that only when I was comfortable being around him again did he try to take things further. Further for him meant hand holding. I tell Marco about the first time I kissed him. In the piano room, unsurprisingly. I tell him how we took things at our own pace, because neither of us felt like the other was going to run away. Because the bottom line was that we were friends. Good friends. Good friends that sometimes kissed.

I tell Marco about our first date. How it was late November. How we went on a walk, but then it starting raining so we ran into a library. How we went from shelf to shelf, finding our favourite books. And then how he pulled me into the psychology section, which was completely empty, and pressed his lips to mine.

I tell him about our first Christmas as a couple. How I went out of my way to find mistletoe, only to realise it wasn’t mistletoe after all. How he kissed me, anyway. I tell him about the New Year’s party he invited me to, which ended with Sasha having to be driven to the hospital because she fell of a table and broke her leg.

I tell Marco how his friend group became my friend group, and mine became his. I tell him how they figured out we were together before we even told them. I tell him how I started missing school over the weekend, because I couldn’t see you. I tell him about the endless hours we spent in my dorm room, side by side on my bed, pressed up in the corner. Just sitting, talking, maybe studying, reading, drawing, only kissing when Eren finally left the room.

I think about how familiar this all feels. Sitting with Marco for hours on end, talking and talking and talking. Back then, I was afraid we’d run out of things to talk about. That at one point it would just stop, and we wouldn’t be able to pick up again. But I know now that it isn’t possible. However much we talk, there’s always something left unsaid. There’s more. With Marco, there’s always something more.

We’re lying on the ground when the first streaks of light start to peek over the horizon. Side by side, staring up at the fading stars. We’ve been quiet for the past hour. It’s not that we ran out of things to say, it just felt like the right thing to do. I told Marco so much tonight. I told him a lot yesterday, too, but today I told him a lot about us. I could tell he was processing it all as he lay on the ground. Every now and then he’d ask me a question, something simple like ‘What was that café called?’ or ‘Was it November or already December?’. I was processing it all, too. Just in a very different way. I went over every memory, tried to remember every minor detail, then locked it away in my mind for safe keeping.

Marco sits up when he notices the sun.

“You’ll come back tonight?” He asks me.

“You know it.” I can’t tell if my vision is blurry from how tired I am or if Marco is already fading. I see him grin.

“Bye, Jean.”

“Bye, Marco.”

And once again, I’m left alone.


End file.
